bettervest is the world’s first crowdinvesting-platform for energy efficiency projects. Trend researcher and futurist Patrick Mijnals came up with this innovative concept in 2006. His vision was to not only use energy efficiency to provide the needed impetus for a climate-friendly economy and society, but that ordinary people should be able to invest in it. During the 2012 event “Startup-Weekend Rhein-Main”, a group of experts in various fields were presented with the opportunity to take this concept further. Over just two days this team took Mijnals’ concept and together they drew up a funding model for energy efficient projects based on the idea of public participation. The model was able to convince a jury of experts and won the team the Startup-Award.
